Sticky Eggplant at the Potsticker House

Some time ago, my friend Marcy (previously featured as the maker of massaged kale salad) reported that a restaurant in Bridgeport makes an amazing eggplant dish. A couple weeks ago, we finally made an Aubergenius excursion to the Potsticker House. The place is just awesome. I give it 4.5 out of 5 eggplants.

Our excursion caught in a strange and awkward moment with someone else coming through the door who apologized for getting in the shot and nobody ready for the camera. 

The eggplant in question was the usual menu item -- eggplant in garlic sauce -- only this version was different from the usual. In many restaurants, eggplant in garlic sauce involves segments of Chinese eggplant friend in oil until deliciously mushy, then served in a dark garlicky sauce with some sprigs of green stuff. This version, in contrast, consisted of battered-and-fried eggplant strips (similar to the House Eggplant at Tony Hu's Lao Beijing) coated in a sticky-sweet-salty-spicy sauce. The addition of peppers and fresh woodsear mushrooms also set this version apart. The mushrooms themselves don't have much flavor, but they have a wonderful rubbery/crunchy texture and soak up sauce like a sponge. 

The eggplant: oh so delicious.

Other things we ordered: ma po tofu (in the corner), a pile of miscellaneous green stuff, dumplings.

There were other eggplant items on the menu that I'm hoping I'll have an opportunity to try sometime in the future. Anyone for a repeat Bridgeport excursion?

Or we could just get 4 orders of this. I wouldn't mind.

Seattle, Satay... I feel like there's a pun waiting to happen but it's just not working

I recently learned that there is a competition called the Punderdome, and that someone I vaguely know just WON. As the Aubergenius, I'm naturally looking out for a Portmantournament (groan) or better yet, a Choonerism Spampionship (ouch). In the meantime, I keep feeling like Seattle and Satay are similar enough words that something good should come of this... but Seattay and Sattaytle are strangely unsatisfying.

It's an eggplant Sattaytle!

During my recent trip to the Seattle area, I went to one of my family's favorite restaurants, the Tamarind Tree. Their menu is massive and there are a number of veggie options, most of which are unusual things I've never seen at Vietnamese restaurants before -- like coconut cake topped with miscellaneous grilled things, crepe filled with other miscellaneous things, strange dumplings filled with somethingorother (OK clearly I can't remember this menu exactly), and a variety of satay appetizers.

A noodle bowl topped with marinated and grilled tofu, fried thingies, fresh thingies and also some stuff.

Dumplings filled with stuff, topped with fried onions and tofu and other fried things that seem like a root of some kind but actually I don't know what it was but it tasted good.

Pho.

 Overall, my impression of the restaurant (not that you asked): nice decor, albeit somewhat dark (black ceiling can feel a bit cave-like), gorgeous bathrooms, hip plateware and presentation, food looks and smells delectable, full of different textures... but regrettably, all the vegetarian options come with the exact same sugary-sweet soy sauce dressing, which results in everything tasting very much the same. Perhaps a couple more veggie sauces on the menu (whatever happened to peanut sauce?) might have improved the experience.

But overall, a SATASTY meal. Guffaw.

This post is relevant to the topic of my blog!

To Salt or Not To Salt: MYSTERY SOLVED

This past weekend I visited former co-chef Zoë, among other awesome friends, in Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was a real foodxtravaganza (say that 5 times fast), albeit one that was somewhat limited eggplant-wise. Shockingly enough, I think the only eggplants of the weekend were a tiny (but delectable) puddle on this amazing plate of goodies from Oasis Falafel in Williamsburg.

Zoë, plate of noms, and miscellaneous bearded person immortalized in Aubergenius history.

Ok, I know this is a tangent, but: this plate contained tomato-ey eggplant salad, falafel, dolmas, hummus, baba ghanoush, beet salad, mojaddara, fried cauliflower, cucumber yogurt salad, tahini, hot sauce, pickles, and two pitas, all for $12.  Seriously, fly to Laguardia right now, take the train to Brooklyn, and go to this place.

Anyway. On this epic trip, I met a friend of Zoë's who happened to have the ultimate definitive answer to the "should I salt eggplant?" mystery. She mentioned offhand that it was a research project she did once, and I was super excited about the prospect of a whole subculture of eggplant researchers out there -- but it turned out she had an awesome high school science teacher who assigned this mystery as a lab project. Zomg jealous.

So, you might ask, should I salt eggplant? And the answer is, yes, but not for the reason you might think. The prevailing myth holds that salting eggplant pulls out the bitterness, thus it's especially good for old, wizened, gnarly eggplants. But it turns out this is all wrong. 

Back up. What is salting eggplant? 

If you cut eggplant in slices and sprinkle them liberally with salt, within 15 minutes you get this:

Photo credit: havedessertfirst.com

The salt draws moisture from the eggplant and they sweat like crazy. You then wipe off the moisture and salt with a towel, and the bitterness is gone, like what allegedly happens to the toxins in your body after lounging in a salt-walled Korean spa for 12 hours.

BUT apparently that's not what really happens. I noticed long ago that salt didn't seem to affect bitterness much, and I had virtually stopped doing it. Turns out it's worth the effort:

The real effect of salt is to break down the cell structure of the eggplant surface just enough to prevent the eggplant from soaking up oil like a sponge. Without the salt treatment, the eggplant will soak oil until it becomes completely saturated, as this experiment by one J. Kenji López-Alt shows:

This eggplant started out at 24 grams, then weighed in at 46 after sitting in a pool of oil; i.e. it absorbed 92% of its weight in oil, as the author points out (I'm a grad student, I cite things!).

The salt-sweating destroys enough of the surface cells that a more modest quantity of oil will yield the same delicious eggplant softness, but without the extreme greasiness. Granted, I often like saturating my eggplant because I love the taste of extra virgin olive, plus greasiness doesn't bother me when I'm not especially afraid of heart failure.

Still, it's great to know that you can reduce the amount of oil and get tasty results, rather than simply adding less oil to unsalted eggplants and ending up with nasty teabag-flavored rubber discs (as I discussed in this entry from long ago).

Hint: To make the process even more effective, grind your towel into the eggplant surface when wiping off the sweat and salt. This further destroys the cells.

Bon eggplatit!

Oppa Sorghum Style

Wait, what? The "gangnam style" song is no longer a hip viral video? It's as outdated as next year's doge? Well shucks. <--- note: also a pun that could apply to sorghum

Even if my internet pop culture is slightly out of date, the good news is that sorghum is timeless. It's a grain that was first domesticated in Ancient Egypt and Ethiopia and, after its dispersal along the silk trade routes, became one of the most widely cultivated grains of India. It's a sort of power-grain that survives all kinds of drought and remains super nutritious...

...and delicious! And fortunately not hard to come by, as it's sold widely in health food stores and gentrified bulk bins. A few days ago I decided to make a spiced sorghum topping for these adorable baby eggplants:

Too cute to pass up.

My idea for this dish was quite similar to the bulgur-topped eggplants from a while back -- but this time I had a tastier array of ingredients to work with rather than random things from my pantry.

Baby eggplants topped with sorghum and leeks

Ingredients
4-6 baby eggplants, tops removed and halved lengthwise
ca. 1 cup sorghum (boiled in salted water for 1 hr and drained)
3 leeks
olive oil
salt and pepper
spices: tomato powder, smoked paprika, green chile powder
chopped cilantro or parsley


First: cut the wee eggpwants in half, salt them if you wish (re: salting, see the entry I am about to write... just after this one), coat them in olive oil and roast them in the oven at 350 degrees.

After about 30 minutes in the oven.

While the eggplants are baking and sorghum is boiling, you can prepare the leeks. I learned how to wash and cut leeks from David Lebovitz, who does a vastly better job of explaining the process than I can. If you cook the leeks on low heat with olive oil for a long time, they eventually "melt" (or so it's called in French, not that I speak French). Typically melted leeks are made with butter, but I always cook with olive oil and I find they taste lovely all the same.

When the leeks are melted down (ca. 20 minutes), add the spices to the oil:

Boiling sorghum and melting leeks. This photo was taken just after I put the spices in.

And once the sorghum is ready, dump that into your leeks and oil mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Leeks and sorghum mixture. 

By this point, the eggplants should be finished and you can begin topping them:

Just pile that stuff right on top.

Sprinkle with chopped herbs and serve.

This particular meal was made with my fave vegan co-chef, Marcy! She made a delicious massaged kale salad with pine nuts and avocado, and we also made yellow squash salad with ginger, lemongrass, and cilantro. Recipes for those are listed below.

Co-chef Marcy's kale specialty.

Sorghum goodness up close.

The full meal: 100% vegan, healthy, full of proteiny grains, and super tasty.

Massaged kale salad

Ingredients
as much kale as desired
lemon juice
nutritional yeast
olive oil
pine nuts
chopped avocado
salt/pepper to taste

Kale is a tough vegetable, often served steamed or sautéed. But Marcy introduced me to a way of preparing kale that is catching on among kaleophiles. (I think that word is apt, since kale does seem to be the most popular vegetable around. But curiously enough, I learned that a lot of folks in Europe consider it to be virtually like animal feed, just like our buddy sorghum. Apparently the Dutch word for kale translates as "rabbit cabbage"! But hey, if it's good enough for the rabbits...)

So anyway, if you spend some time massaging it with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt, the combination of acid and crumpling breaks down some of the kale fibers and tenderizes it, almost the way acid "cooks" the ingredients in a ceviche. (I'm not a huge advocate of the raw diet personally, but if you don't need to cook it, why bother? Especially in the blazing Chicago summer.)

After you've massaged the kale to your heart's content, add nutritional yeast, pine nuts, avocado, and any additional salt/pepper the salad needs. Super simple, tasty, and leftovers keep surprisingly well in the fridge.


Yellow squash with ginger

Ingredients
as many yellow squashes as you want
lots of olive oil
fresh ginger, chopped
Cambodian lemongrass curry powder (or anything else similar -- Thai green curry paste, ground lemongrass, etc.)
salt and pepper to taste
chopped cilantro

Slice and sautée yellow squash in olive oil, turning each piece so that both sides are nice and brown. After piling the finished squash pieces in a bowl and seasoning with salt and pepper, add a tiny bit of extra olive oil to the pan and fry the fresh ginger along with the spices (just long enough to season the oil, but don't let the spices burn!). Drizzle the spiced ginger-oil and chunks of ginger over the squash. Top with chopped cilantro. This dish is oily, but it's olive oil and therefore delicious. The leftover oil-squash-juice can be drizzled on top of other salads. Or just rub it into your skin for an instant squash facial! (erm... maybe not.)

... and several months later, another homemade Indian feast!

This poor blog has gone somewhat to seed, not unlike the lakefront park this morning:

Meanwhile, I am now the proud owner of an Aubergenius-themed apron thanks to the generosity of my blog's most loyal reader, my very own grandmother... but alas, I feel ashamed to don the apron given the scarcity of posts in the last several months. I have looked at eggplants, purchased eggplants, admired eggplants, chopped eggplants, prepared and even eaten eggplants many times since the last entry, but for some reason my desire to post photos and glib commentary has waned.

Nonetheless, I had an amazing feast prepared by none other than my piano teacher, Amy Briggs, who is as phenomenal a cook as she is pianist and teacher. She single-handedly made several different curries, veggies, dal, and a homemade VEGAN raita (made from tofu and surprisingly refreshing). And of course eggplant was among the spread:

Clockwise from left: saffron rice, green beans with mustard seeds, potato and cauliflower curry, dal, eggplant, and raita.

A bird's-eye (or hungry-piano-student's-eye) view.

It was quite a cooking extravaganza.

The amazing chef!

Overall, a very impressive and totally delicious (and totally vegan!) meal.

Homemade Indian Feast

I'll admit, I'm not always in the mood to experiment with new eggplant recipes. Sometimes you're in the store, you see a gleaming eggplant, you stick in the basket, and when you get home all you want is the same exact curry you made the previous week.

For blogging purposes, this kind of cooking redundancy can be problematic. Being the self-proclaimed Aubergenius, I'm supposed to hunt down every eggplant recipe I can find, try cooking each one, tinker, improve, explore, post, rinse, repeat.

But lately, given frigid temperatures and a busy schedule, all I ever want is the quick eggplant-chickpea curry I featured a couple posts ago. My awesome co-chef Zoë and I made a true Indian feast a couple weeks ago, perfect to combat the Chicago winter.

Engrossed in conversation. Co-chef, if you're reading this, pardon the candid paparazza shot.

In addition to the eggplant curry and rice, we had homemade tortillas (courtesy of my mother, who made them on her last visit and stored them in my freezer), spiced okra with roasted fingerling potatoes, carrot-ginger-coriander slaw, homemade cilantro-mint chutney (a Zoë specialty), yogurt, lime pickle, and brinjal eggplant relish.

A feast!

It was one of the best homemade meals I've had in a long time. And goes to show that whether or not you're trying out new recipes, cooking for other people brings out your ambitious side. Plus, the spirit and cheer makes everything taste even better.